Tangkhul (Tangkhul Naga) is a
Sino-Tibetan language of the
Tangkhulic branch. It is spoken in 168 villages of
Ukhrul district,
Manipur, India, with speakers scattered in
Nagaland and
Tripura as well.
Within
Ukhrul district,
Manipur, Tangkhul is spoken in the villages of
Hundung,
Shiroi
is a city located in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 63,190 in 26,204 households and a population density of 1800 persons per km². The total area of the city is . The name of the city comes from the word for ...
,
Langdang
Langdang is a village located north of Ukhrul in Ukhrul district, Manipur state, India. The village is 13 kilometers from Ukhrul. National Highway 150 Imphal-Kohima via Jessami passes through the village. The village is divided into two major par ...
,
Lamlang Gate
Lamlang ( fa, لاملنگ, also Romanized as Lāmlang; also known as Lālang) is a village in Anjirabad Rural District, in the Central District of Gorgan County, Golestan Province, Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran ...
,
Litan
Litan (died 900) was abbot of Tuam.
Litan was the fifth known abbot of Tuam, County Galway, but nothing else appears to be known of him. He was the apparent successor of Cormac mac Ciaran but because the sabbatical succession of Tuam is f ...
,
Yangangpokpi, and other locations (Arokianathan 1995).
Tangkhul is not close to other
Naga languages. It is a
dialect continuum, in which speakers from neighboring villages may be able to understand each other, but a dialect farther north or south will be less easily understood, if at all. The ''
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
'' is the Hunphun (
Ukhrul
Ukhrul/Hunphun ( Meitei pronunciation:/ˈuːkˌɹəl or ˈuːkˌɹʊl/) is a town in the state of Manipur, India. Ukhrul is the home of the Tangkhul Nagas. It is the administrative headquarter of the Ukhrul district. There are also four sub-div ...
) dialect. Languages in the northern villages of
Chingjaroi,
Razai,
Jessami and Soraphung have languages under the
Angami–Pochuri group of languages.
The language
dialect spoken by the people of Hunphun (the traditional name of Ukhrul) became the most common dialect among the Tangkhuls because the British set up their administration in Ukhrul. The American Baptist missionary Rev.
William Pettigrew translated the Bible into the Hunphun dialect.
Phonology
Consonants
* Stop sounds /p t tʃ k/ may have voiced allophones
d dʒ ɡin free variation.
* /m/ may be heard as
�when preceding /f/ or /ʋ/.
* /r/ can be heard as
or
�in free variation.
Vowels
* /i e a u/ can have allophone sounds of
� ɛ ɐ ɯin free variation.
References
{{Languages of Northeast India
Tangkhulic languages
Languages of Manipur
Languages of Nagaland